


Just One of Those Things

by Margo_Kim



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Domestic, Established Relationship, F/F, Femslash February, Future Fic, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 12:45:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3411110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margo_Kim/pseuds/Margo_Kim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not love, no, but that leaves plenty of other options on the table, and just because Natasha and Maria will never confirm nor deny any of them doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t feel free to speculate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just One of Those Things

**Author's Note:**

> A quick ficlet, in between working on a lot of larger projects.

It’s not love, no, but that leaves plenty of other options on the table, and just because Natasha and Maria will never confirm nor deny any of them doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t feel free to speculate. People do, all the time, and the two women don’t mind. Not much. Not where other people can see. They are unflappable, or supposed to be, and that means not being flapped, that means raising your eyebrow when you want to scream, that means saying less and doing more. Maria hates it. Natasha doesn’t. Natasha hating appearances would be like a fish hating water, after all, and Natasha hates enough things in the world that she doesn’t feel much need to add unnecessarily to the list.

They kiss. Now and then. Not all the time. Not always on the lips. Maria has A Thing about tongues, Natasha has A Thing about intimacy. So they don’t always kiss. Sometimes they do. It’s usually dry and chaste and only after Natasha has taken off whoever she’s supposed to be that day. Maria never kisses Natasha while she’s in-character. They’ve agreed on monogamy, and Maria would never cheat. When they kiss, Natasha keeps her hands by her sides and her eyes open. She says she likes it that way. She doesn’t want to distract herself from the experience of their lips, but that she doesn’t want to leave herself vulnerable, and here she pauses, to attack of course, she clarifies. Maria kisses with her eyes closed and her hands fervent like, in Maria's words, a normal person, but there is a strange charm to Natasha’s approach. If it is a touch methodical, then Natasha is saying that Maria’s lips are worthy of study, of risk.

Mostly whatever the hell they are to each other involves sleeping together. In the euphemistic sense, sure, which can get impressively competitive and often involves a decent amount of stretching ahead of time. And in the literal sense. Two girls, one bed. It’s perversely domestic, and it’s a tossup which one of them it disturbs more. But it’s not like they have to live together all the time, what with SHIELD, what with Hydra, what with supervillains and superspies and Norse gods, what with a jurisdiction over the entire planet and a fair bit of the sky. And when they are in the same place, New York usually, it doesn’t make sense to live separately when they can live together, and it doesn’t make sense to have two beds when they can fit in one. Think of the safety, Maria said when she proposed the idea, and the convenience, Natasha said when she agreed, and neither of them said _I sleep better when you are there and when you are gone I don’t sleep at all_ because there are certain things you just don’t say. You know the things. We all know the things.

This whole nameless _this_ started ages ago with booze and One Last Mission, one of those times when they thought that they’re were going in to their deaths and they went anyway because that’s what duty means, and they found each other because that’s what desperation means, and they didn’t talk about it for a few years because that’s what denial means, but eventually it was four years later and Natasha was handing over her case report on Stark when Maria asked if she ever thought about Rome. You know. Rome four years ago. Yes, Natasha said after a moment, she thought about it.

Maria raised her perfect eyebrow and asked if Natasha ever thought about doing it again.

That was then, and this is now, four years since the last time that it was four years. They call Maria _Director Hill_ these days, and they call Natasha by her name, which is a hell of a trip for both of them. Sometimes they’re on the news together, and sometimes they’re on the news separately, but either way they’re on the news because what they do is newsworthy. Maria has a press secretary and thwarts a new alien invasion twice a month. Natasha has forty million Twitter followers and doesn’t become strangers anymore. They share a bed, and a kitchen, and a living room too. They don’t talk to other people about what they are, but when Pepper invites them to her wedding, she sends them one invite with both their names. Tony has to ask her why. Maria argues that this obliviousness is a male thing, Natasha argues it’s a Tony thing, and they spend a pleasant afternoon sniping about it. They’re so compatible sometimes that they can fight for hours.

When they sleep together, they take turns falling asleep. The little spoon always goes first. It’s something about security, something about affection. Maria says it’s something about habit and expectation at this point, since they’ve taken to claiming the position based on what time they have to get up the next morning. Maria usually wins. Natasha likes being the big spoon better anyway, the protector. Maria likes being the small spoon, the protected. Which makes sense. You hear all the time about those Type A executives and CEOs who can’t get off unless someone tells them what to do. People like role reversal in the bedroom. No one should have to fall asleep as what they are. The ex-assassin can cradle her someone, the director of SHIELD can let herself be cradled. It’s not love, or at least, at least neither of them would ever say that aloud. It’s just one of those things, you know, that’s a little larger than whatever word you’d try to put it in. Maria tries once, and Natasha presses a rare kiss to her lips, and in the silence of their own bedroom, they say enough.


End file.
